Music and Intertextuality in Aristophanic Comedy

Like a landscape, a soundscape is both a world and a culture constructed to make sense of the world; it is a site in which meaning is contested and negotiated. An important part of a performance’s soundscape is its music which is usually prepared in advance and integrated into the total directorial conception. Aristophanic comedy with its many intertextual references to other genres, like for example tragedy and rituals, opens a world of possibilities for composers to experiment with different and contrasting musical styles. It also offers the opportunity to challenge the dichotomy between tragedy and comedy with regards to their respective claims to seriousness and funniness through adding a sombre tone to a comic scene. As Goldhill insightfully observes part of the essence of Old Comedy – ‘how far, how serious, how comic…are questions that Aristophanes’ writing constantly poses for its audiences’ (Goldhill, S. 1991, CUP. 194).

Using the comedy Frogs as my case study, I shall argue that Jani Christou’s musical score for Karolos Koun’s 1966 production of Frogs achieved to creatively combine a large number of ill-matched musical elements ranging from uplifting popular songs to sombre ceremonial tunes and from jazz to everyday sounds, allowing audiences to experience Aristophanic comedy as an all-encompassing world of contrasting emotions and perspectives where as Michael Silk contends ‘all things seem to be possible and what are supposed to be incompatible opposites are found freely co-existing or freely exchanged’ (Silk, M. 2000, OUP. 92-93).